A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to biosensors useful for detecting biological material. More specifically, it is directed to a method and device for determining the amount of shift in an optical biosensor's spectral output.
B. Description of the Related Art
With the completion of the sequencing of the human genome, one of the next grand challenges of molecular biology will be to understand how the many protein targets encoded by DNA interact with other proteins, small molecule pharmaceutical candidates, and a large host of enzymes and inhibitors. See e.g., Pandey & Mann, “Proteomics to study genes and genomes,” Nature, 405, p. 837–846, 2000; Leigh Anderson et al., “Proteomics: applications in basic and applied biology,” Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 11, p. 408–412, 2000; Patterson, “Proteomics: the industrialization of protein chemistry,” Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 11, p. 413–418, 2000; MacBeath & Schreiber, “Printing Proteins as Microarrays for High-Throughput Function Determination,” Science, 289, p. 1760–1763, 2000; De Wildt et al., “Antibody arrays for high-throughput screening of antibody-antigen interactions,” Nature Biotechnology, 18, p. 989–994, 2000. To this end, tools that have the ability to simultaneously quantify many different biomolecular interactions with high sensitivity will find application in pharmaceutical discovery, proteomics, and diagnostics. Further, for these tools to find widespread use, they must be simple to use, inexpensive to own and operate, and applicable to a wide range of analytes that can include, for example, polynucleotides, peptides, small proteins, antibodies, and even entire cells.
For the majority of assays currently performed for genomics, proteomics, pharmaceutical compound screening, and clinical diagnostic applications, fluorescent or colorimetric chemical labels are commonly attached to the molecules under study so they may be readily visualized. Because attachment of a label substantially increases assay complexity and possibly alters the functionality of molecules through conformational modification or epitope blocking, various label-free biosensor technologies have emerged. Label-free detection phenomenologies include measuring changes in mass, microwave transmission line characteristics, microcantilever deflection, or optical density upon a surface that is activated with a receptor molecule with high affinity for a detected molecule. The widespread commercial acceptance of label-free biosensor technologies has been limited by their ability to provide high detection sensitivity and high detection parallelism in a format that is inexpensive to manufacture and package. For example, biosensors fabricated upon semiconductor or glass wafers in batch photolithography/etch/deposition processes are costly to produce and package if the sensor area is to be large enough to contain large numbers of parallel assays. Similarly, the requirement of making electrical connections to individual biosensors in an array poses difficult challenges in terms of package cost and compatibility with exposure of the sensor to fluids.
Biosensors have been developed to detect a variety of biomolecular complexes including oligonucleotides, antibody-antigen interactions, hormone-receptor interactions, and enzyme-substrate interactions. In general, biosensors consist of two components: a highly specific recognition element and a transducer that converts the molecular recognition event into a quantifiable signal. Signal transduction has been accomplished by many methods, including fluorescence, interferometry (Jenison et al., “Interference-based detection of nucleic acid targets on optically coated silicon,” Nature Biotechnology, 19, p. 62–65; Lin et al., “A porous silicon-based optical interferometric biosensor,” Science, 278, p. 840–843, (1997)), and gravimetry (A. Cunningham, Bioanalytical Sensors, John Wiley & Sons (1998)).
Of the optically-based transduction methods, direct methods that do not require labeling of analytes with fluorescent compounds are of interest due to the relative assay simplicity and ability to study the interaction of small molecules and proteins that are not readily labeled. Direct optical methods include surface plasmon resonance (SPR) (Jordan & Corn, “Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging Measurements of Electrostatic Biopolymer Adsorption onto Chemically Modified Gold Surfaces,” Anal. Chem., 69:1449–1456 (1997), grating couplers (Morhard et al., “Immobilization of antibodies in micropatterns for cell detection by optical diffraction,” Sensors and Actuators B, 70, p. 232–242, 2000), ellipsometry (Jin et al., “A biosensor concept based on imaging ellipsometry for visualization of biomolecular interactions,” Analytical Biochemistry, 232, p. 69–72, 1995), evanascent wave devices (Huber et al., “Direct optical immunosensing (sensitivity and selectivity),” Sensors and Actuators B, 6, p. 122–126, 1992), and reflectometry (Brecht & Gauglitz, “Optical probes and transducers,” Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 10, p. 923–936, 1995). Theoretically predicted detection limits of these detection methods have been determined and experimentally confirmed to be feasible down to diagnostically relevant concentration ranges. However, to date, these methods have yet to yield commercially available high-throughput instruments that can perform high sensitivity assays without any type of label in a format that is readily compatible with the microtiter plate-based or microarray-based infrastructure that is most often used for high-throughput biomolecular interaction analysis. Therefore, there is a need in the art for compositions, biosensors, methods of preparing biosensors and analytical methods that can achieve these goals.
Guided Mode Resonant Filter Biosensors (GMRFBs) have been shown to be one such biosensor well-suited to determining the degree to which biomolecular interactions are taking place near the sensor surface, without resorting to labeling techniques (including fluorescence, calorimetric, and radiolabeling). GMRFBs also excel at monitoring interactions involving small molecules, proteins, cells, microorganisms, and viruses.
Thus, there exists a need for robust methods of determining the relative shifts of the biosensor spectra. Preferably, such an algorithm can detect spectral changes even when the spectral characteristics of the biosensor do not exhibit a clearly defined peak, or if it has multiple peaks.